


Life's a Very Funny Proposition After All

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Time, Now I'm trying to imagine Mac with the Rachel haircut, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Pre-Series, Shameless Smut, This takes place in the 90s, Will and Mac try to have a one-night stand and fail?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:43:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5175398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She slides into the booth across from him, a glittering silver gown clinging to her curves. Startling, Will tries not to react — the bar is crowded, and dark, but not particularly loud yet at this time of night. He has to remind himself that he’s no longer in DC, and he is no longer in politics. He and MacKenzie McHale are on the same side of the divide now, even if he’s working as a legal correspondent for a rival network. </p><p>Her jacket slides off her shoulders. She tends to it, picking off a piece of lint from the lapel. “I know it was you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life's a Very Funny Proposition After All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> **A/N:** I'm really good at writing AUs of AUs. Like, so good at them guys. This fic is inspired by the fifth section of my most recent fic, [Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5159783). The section is down below, so you guys don't have to refer back. Anyway, this is for Clare, who suggested it. Because she's amazing and even though I was too overwhelmed and fucked up to reply to your super supportive email last week, I really appreciated it and the fact that I always feel like I can come to you with the truth and I value our relationship so, so much and I feel like I don't tell you that enough. 
> 
> This fic takes place in 1996. The only thing I really had to Google was what flavor Pop Tarts were in stores in 1996. Title is taken from [a song with a similar name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWgLt8X_nXs).

_The envelope appears in the interior pocket of her pea coat after she slipped away from the bar at Off the Record to use the bathroom. Written over the seal is in what she thinks is a man’s untidy script: On the record, for the record. Use wisely._

_Excusing herself from her date with a fabricated upset stomach, she escapes the basement bar packed with Senators and White House staffers and hails herself a cab. Watching carefully, he follows her out, ten steps behind. Eager, maybe, to see how she reacts to what he’s given her. It’s not the same caliber as Afghanistan falling into the hands of the Taliban, but Will figures that a twenty-four year old producer takes her breaks where she can get them. For a moment, she looks back. But he’s safely hidden in the shadows, and so she slips into the car._

_Safely ensconced inside the dark taxi, she opens the envelope, pulling out its contents for examination._

_A list of Republican congressional representatives on the prosecution in the Clinton impeachment hearings who have had extramarital affairs. Neatly typed on nondescript copy paper, with dates and names and in a few instances — pictures and correspondence. People willing to go on the record to talk._

_All Mac can figure is that her source is someone inside the RNC._

_There’s no way a Democrat would be anonymously passing this off to an ABC field producer based in the back row of the White House press room or the steps of the Hill._

_It’s an inside man._

_For weeks she considers chasing his identity, but all the information he gives her turns out to be true. When a press release announcing Will McAvoy’s resignation from the RNC crosses the wires at the height of the Clinton Impeachment crosses her desk she stops, and wonders._

**_—_ Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation**

 

* * *

 

She slides into the booth across from him, a glittering silver gown clinging to her curves. Startling, Will tries not to react — the bar is crowded, and dark, but not particularly loud yet at this time of night. He has to remind himself that he’s no longer in DC, and he is no longer in politics. He and MacKenzie McHale are on the same side of the divide now, even if he’s working as a legal correspondent for a rival network.

Her jacket slides off her shoulders. She tends to it, picking off a piece of lint from the lapel. “I know it was you.”

“I’d imagine that fleeing the city two weeks after the story went to air wasn’t particularly subtle,” he answers. “Aren’t you supposed to respect my anonymity?”

Her painted lips form into a small grin.

“Unless you’ve told anyone, you’ve remained anonymous,” she says, fiddling with her purse. “This isn’t Washington, Will. No one is going to snitch to party leaders that you were seen talking to a journalist at a bar. Newt Gingrich isn’t going to come swooping down from the ceiling, screaming like a banshee.”

Picking up his drink, he snorts into what is a fine vintage of whisky. “Well, that’s an image.”

His eyes track from her fine collarbones to her cleavage, and then back to her face — if he’d had less to drink, he’d feel more guilty about that. Instead, he notices that MacKenzie bites her lower lip, eyes darkening, cheeks pinkening under her layers of make-up.

“What are you doing in New York?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Meeting with a headhunter from CNN.”

“You’re not happy at ABC?”

“I’m desperately underpaid at ABC,” she answers. “I mean, I love working with Diane Sawyer. There’s just no room for me to do anything, and since…” Swallowing hard, her voice trails off. Then, something forcible and sharp brightening her face again, she starts again. “My team ran into a spot of trouble, about a year ago.”

“Kabul,” Will says pointedly, but as soft as he can manage. He drinks more of his whisky. “I was at the Congressional hearings. And if ABC is wasting your talent, then I say fuck ‘em and meet with every headhunter on the East Coast.” He catches a server on their way back to the bar, asks MacKenzie what she wants to drink, and orders it for her. Once the server is out of earshot again, he says, “That’s why I chose _you_ by the way. Because I was at the hearings. I wanted to meet you, after that. But I was sure you wouldn’t want to see a Republican ever again.”

“I think you’re the only Republican who would have wanted to speak to me, after the spectacle I made,” she answers dryly. “I still haven’t seen one, since the hearings.”

“Except me.”

She smirks. He notices, not for the first time tonight, how exceptionally pretty MacKenzie is.

“Except you.” The server arrives with her drink — three fingers of Jameson, neat — and she accepts it graciously, and then swallows half of it. Her hands shake, he notices. “It makes my job a bit difficult, at times. I did quite the number on my social capital with that whole side of the aisle. Most of them _liked_ my father, you know. Then with the story you gave me… _well._ I think it’d do me some good to get away from the Hill.”

“So the dinners with headhunters aren’t one hundred percent voluntary?”

Her smile takes a self-deprecating turn. “Ah, no.”

This time, a pang of guilt does take root. He watches her across the table in their narrow booth, wondering if he should offer to buy her… well, she’s already had dinner, he figures. He doesn’t know what he should offer her. They’ve rather ended up in the position, albeit for different reasons. Or perhaps the same one, just from different directions — Will is so sick of his party that he could vomit.

Sighing, she attempts to cross her legs. Her calf brushes against the inside of his knee, a thrilling sort of weight. Tensing, she looks at him with startled eyes, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth. Sliding his hand under the table, he gently brushes his fingers over her leg, looking to her for tacit permission before pulling it into his lap.

 _She’s only twenty-four,_ Will tries to remind himself. _She’s too fucking young for you._ He tries, and fails, his finger caressing the fine bones of her ankle, and then up to the sensitive skin behind her knee. Her shoe slips off from where it hangs precariously on her toes, and he puts it next to him in the booth.

“How did you know I’d be here?” he asks, trying to stop his voice from dropping and failing.

“I didn’t,” she says, face flushing. “Just lucky, I guess.”

They can debate who’s the lucky one later on, when he explains how she was the one who hastened him along to the conclusion that the _Republican Revolution_ was perhaps not the political shift he had hoped for, back when the party was what is was back when Bush was in office.

“Are you staying in a hotel?”

Squirming across from him, she smirks again. Will can guess what she’s thinking — a journalist in a compromising position with a source. Wouldn’t the Congressmen they outed as sexual hypocrites just love to see this?

She finishes her drink.

“I was just going to take a late train back to DC,” she murmurs, eyes widening guilelessly. “I just worked sixteen days straight, I was told to stay out of the newsroom until Monday.”

“I have an apartment,” he offers, heart pounding. Internally, he curses himself, and tries not to stammer.  “Not much in it yet, but you’re welcome to ah… I have a couch. You can take the bed, though.”

“Are you really too much of a gentleman to hit on me?” She gives him a toothy grin, leaning her elbows onto the table and dropping her chin into her hands. “After the salacious details you gave me to put on national news?”

He feels himself blush — he never does this. He doesn’t pick up women at bars, and take them home for sex. He doesn’t do this, but he’s doing this. But God, if he doesn’t already know her, doesn’t he? He knows he can trust her. And she’s so pretty, and soft. Her dress is shimmering in the low yellow light and her eyes are big and gleaming and her breasts look like they need his mouth on them.

It doesn’t need to be everything, but she might be the something he’s been needing.

“I have an apartment, MacKenzie,” he says, allowing his voice to drop.

Humming, she reaches for the hand he’s been keeping around his drink. She twines their fingers together, stroking her thumb in light circles over his palm — he shivers, feeling a distinct amount of blood starting to flow down into his trousers over just her barest of touches.

(He’s fucked, isn’t he? He’s thirty-six, she’s twenty-four, and if she moves to New York, he is one hundred perfect fucked.)

“Most people just call me Mac, you know.”

“I prefer MacKenzie, if that’s alright with you.” He slides his hands up as far they’ll go on her legs, reaching the middle of her thigh, just under the hem of her dress.

“Are you trying to get me into bed with you, Mr. McAvoy?”

“If I said yes?”

She presses her toes against his erection. “That’s a politician’s answer, Will. You’re not a politician anymore.”

It’s a fight to keep his hips from jerking into the delicious pressure she’s putting on him, and to keep his eyes locked with hers. It’s going to take some deprogramming, he thinks, because he barely wants to ask her a straight question and her foot is on his cock, so he really doubts that she’s going to tell him no. “Do you want to come home with me, MacKenzie?”

Her answer is a wild kind of grin.

To be honest, she’s surprised at herself _—_ she really doesn’t do this. Go home from bars, with men. She hasn’t done it since university. In DC it just feels like a reason to be on guard, to be ready to fight. Sex shouldn’t feel like such a risk or a gamble, MacKenzie thinks. It should just be sex. Fun and hot and electric, and without the worry about if it’s going to be held over her head or her partner trying to fuck her into submission as if she was a rider on a bill or a wayward politician.

And that’s not even getting into sleeping with other journalists.

At her age, they’re all trying to step on each other’s throats to get into a better row in the White House press room or a better position outside the portico, or the hallway in the Capitol Building. Take all that bitter rivalry into the bedroom and… MacKenzie has never particularly been into drunken hate sex, and it’s becoming a threat to her personal life that she might have to become accustomed to it if she stays in DC much longer.

A woman, after all, has needs.

But when Will drops his arm over her shoulders in the back of the taxi to his apartment in the financial district and kisses her, Mac feels _safe._ Safe enough that it progresses farther than she’s usually inclined to let things go in the back of a taxi — his tongue is in her mouth and his hand is down the neckline of her dress and inside her bra.

His apartment turns out to be a fairly nice one bedroom set-up on the ninth floor of a Tribeca high rise. What it lacks in square footage it makes up in floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall windows that illuminate the living room without turning a single light on.

They turn out to be in his bedroom, too.

Which is something she finds out quickly.

Will makes an overture of coffee after he throws his briefcase and pager onto the kitchen counter, and she rejects said overture on the basic principle of coffee meaning her mouth would be occupied with things other than kissing him. After that, he makes short work of directing them to the bedroom, and they tumble down onto the mattress with little to no finesse.

Nibbling on his bottom lip, she kicks her high heels off, listening to them clatter down onto the bare hardwood floor. Arching her back, she tries to reach the zipper of her dress. Will’s hands beat hers there, yanking the zipper down impatiently, his fingers fanning out over the bared skin of her back. Then his hands slide upwards again, finding the clasp of her bra.

Realizing that he’s more than happy to take her clothes off for her, Mac moves her hands to his belt buckle.

She knows what she felt earlier, and she wants it inside of her.

“What are you—?”

With no preamble, Mac finds herself rolled on top of him, her panties around her ankle and her dress pulled down from her shoulders.

“Get up here,” he says, clenching his fingers into the fabric at her waist, bunching it up until the hem of her dress is at her belly button.

“What?”

“Get up here.” His pupils dilate, his eyes seeming a dozen shades darker than before. “I fucked up my elbow last month, but I wanna — just get up here.”

Not that she was particularly promiscuous at school or really has any time to date _now_ but no one she’s ever slept with has offered to perform this particular variation of oral sex on her before. Mostly, she’s worried that she’ll manage to suffocate him. Which would just be plain unfortunate, since she’s looking forward to getting to know Will McAvoy better.

“You’re sure?”

His hands cup her breasts, his thumbs tracing teasing circles over her nipples. She grows wetter between her legs, and she pushes her thighs in against him.

“MacKenzie…” Hesitantly, she starts crawling towards the headboard and relocates his hands to her waist, raises her eyebrows when he moves them to her ass. “Trust me, this’ll just work out better for the both of us.”

“Not if I cut off your oxygen supply.”

“You don’t think I’m into that?” He smirks. His eyes flicker up and back to his headboard. “Just hold on.”

Mac frowns at the nondescript wallpaper less than a foot from her face. “You’re not worried about your neighbors hearing?”

“With their bullshit…” he mutters, and when he gently strokes his fingertips over the backs of her thighs she notices for the first time that his fingertips are covered in calluses — she thinks she remembers seeing a guitar in the living room. She looks down at him between her legs, and squeals when he turns his head to bite at the inside of her thigh. “Just pull on my hair then.”

“You’re into that?” she jokes breathlessly.

“To be honest, I think you could do anything to me and I’d be into it.”

“So noted.”

He pulls her down onto his face, then. Within less than a minute, she thinks he’s got himself a convert. Gravity is definitely working in her favor, here. And his tongue. And his lips. His nose, even. Clearly she should have considered going out (or going home with) with a man in his thirties before tonight. She finds herself moaning more loudly than she’s come to expect from herself, Will’s mouth creating a bright unyielding sort of pressure, coiling tightly in her center.

Then his fingers get involved, curling inside of her, and she’s gone.

“Oh _fuck_ — Will!”

One hand rattling the headboard, the other threaded through his hair, her climax hits her without much preamble.

And he just doesn’t stop. Hitting the same spot inside of her again and again, Will sucks noisily on her clit. Tilting her head back, Mac feels her back arch until she threatens to fall over as the pleasure burns to a scorching intensity. Faintly, she can hear herself crying out, can hear the wet sounds of his fingers fucking into her quickly, can hear his own low sounds of arousal.

If he’s trying to get her number, he definitely has her convinced.

“Okay,” she pants, screwing her eyes shut. “Okay, okay.” Clenching both hands into his hair, she wrenches herself off of him. Then with her thighs shaking, she sits back on his stomach, and then rolls off of him. “Take your clothes off,” she says, after he’s moved onto his side to massage and caress her, trying to bring her down.

(Screw that, she wants to go back _up._ )

His hands pause, the expression on his face one of mild surprise. “What?”

“Will, I want you to take your clothes off now,” she says again, laughing breathlessly as she tries to finish getting herself out of her dress. Her panties are gone — where to, she has no clue. “And then I want you to find a condom, and find one quickly.”

“Oh.”

Looking adorably chastened, he bounds out of bed and shucks off his clothes before extracting a condom from his nightstand and crawling back into bed next to her. Both naked now — and feeling a bit awkward, she thinks, or perhaps it's just her — they start to try to fit themselves together.

His nimble guitarist fingers fumble with the condom wrapper, so she takes it from him and opens it herself. More slowly than is strictly necessary, she pinches the tip of the condom and rolls it down his erection, wrapping her hand around him to size him up.

He watches her, entranced.

With a sheepish grin, she rises up onto her knees and straddles him, palming him into place. Sinking down slowly, she savors the way her flesh stretches around him — she doesn’t think she’ll be able to come again, but he still feels so damn _good._

“Hi,” she says, noticing his eyes on her breasts.

His gaze lifts to her face, and he rubs his hands over her forearms before taking her wrists and putting her hands on his chest. “Hi.”

With a testing sort of stroke, Mac tries to find an angle that suits them. Under her, Will’s hips flex up into hers, his cock pulsing inside of her. So she does it again, and again, until she builds them into a steady rhythm.

His thoughts are occupied by the visage in front him — he doesn’t _think_ she’s trying to look this sexy. She just might be naturally this good at sex. Or maybe they’re just good at it together, somehow. Will knows that he’s a visual man with an oral fixation, but holy fuck. He should have spoken to MacKenzie a year ago.

(Or not. Who knows what would have happened?)

She’s wet, and tight, and moving in all the right ways.

Closing her eyes, she plants her hands on his shoulder and picks up speed. Her breasts are moving in front of his face, and he leans up to capture a nipple between his lips. Sucks, and then releases it to pay due attention to the other breast, licking a stripe in a valley of skin between them.

His bedroom — barely furnished with anything more than a bed and a dresser and a mirror — is filled with the sounds of one body entering another. Feeling his orgasm building in the base of his spine, he places his thumb to ride over her clit, and presses down.

She shivers, hips moving from side to side, and he feels her muscles fluttering around him and she whimpers and just _holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck_ she’s coming, and then _he’s_ coming.

“Shit,” he groans, and then her name.

She answers with his own, and a nod. Limbs loosening, she lies on top of him, her breath hot on his neck.

They have to do this again, right? he asks himself. She has to feel this too? He can’t just be imagining this. He wants to see her again. Will thinks he would do anything for a phone number, pager number, email, her desk extension at work. Just so long as he can talk to her again.

Nervous in a way he wasn’t before, he gets up to deal with the condom. Once he remembers that the only trash can he currently owns is in his _kitchen_ and finally makes it back to bed, she’s half-asleep and sprawled out over the left side of the mattress, under the covers.

“Am I allowed to stay?” she mumbles, blinking blearily.

_Stay forever._

“Yes, but I’m afraid all I have for breakfast is stale Pop Tarts.”

Shrugging, she turns onto her side. “So long as they’re the cinnamon ones. I’ll have to call Amtrak in the morning. Reschedule my ride home.”

“You can use my computer,” he offers.

It’s new. One of his sister made him get it, and installed Windows 97 on it. Someone might as well get some use out of it.

MacKenzie yawns, reaching for him when he slides between the sheets. Pliant and satiated, she furls herself around him. “Does Amtrak have a website now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Mostly he’s focused on the fact that her accent gets stronger when she’s sleepy; before he was wondering if the British accent was something she put on, or if it's real.

Real, it seems.

Unthinkingly, he kisses her forehead.

“Hmmm.”

Sleep takes them both at roughly the same time. Her, a little before him. He spends the extra minutes watching her. In turn, she awakes a few minutes before him, sneaks into the living room, and picks up the phone out of its receiver to call Amtrak. The customer service representative is polite enough for a Saturday morning, and MacKenzie is still nude as she’s fishing her credit card out of her purse to pay the fee to transfer her ticket to the train for DC that’s due to leave in fifty minutes.

She considers waking Will to say goodbye.

Considers, and wants to.

But, overwhelmed, she writes her home phone number on a piece of paper she’s torn out of her planner, folds it neatly, and leaves it on his counter with a note.

She boards the Amtrak 6 train to DC wearing a sweatshirt she stole from his closet.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
